


For the Sake of Being Happy

by Spotedleaf5



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Episode: s0306 we're going to need a bigger vote, F/M, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-25
Packaged: 2018-09-11 23:07:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9039578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spotedleaf5/pseuds/Spotedleaf5
Summary: Happens during/right before episode 6 of season 3





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whataboutateakettle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whataboutateakettle/gifts).



> Happy Holidays Ella! Hope this lives up to your request!

Toby awoke, aware that the companion usually found to his left was no longer in bed with him. He looked to the bathroom where a sliver of moonlight from the skylight outlined the woman he was looking for. 

Her head was bent down, and even with no light to confirm it, Toby was absolutely sure she was doing the adorable frustrated eyebrow thing. Her hand rested on her stomach before she sighed, shifting. Her silhouette leaned on the sink, face close to the mirror, tracing the circles under her eyes. Her hands fell to her sides, but she continued looking straight ahead into the mirror.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she whispered.

“Come back to bed,” Toby insisted, rearranging the quilt so that it nearly engulfed him.

“Actually, I think I’m done with sleep for the night,” she exited the bathroom, crossing to stand in the doorway to the hall.

“Stay with me,” Toby asked.

“I was going to draft at the garage.”

“Draft here.”

“You know the tablet’s shit for accuracy compared to what paper can do.”

“Hap, please.”

“I suppose I can just do a rough draft for now,” she closed the door and grabbed her tablet off the nightstand, crawling back to bed.

“So, what are you drafting?”

“The other day Ralph was asking about our solar panels and I realized that since they’d been set up, we’d been letting them slide. A while ago Sly had been telling Ralph about carrageenan and its stabilizing properties. I figured adding it to our waterbed solution could help improve efficiency. After I have a draft I’m going to send it to Walt to see if he can see anything I can’t.”

“Mmm, sounds nice,” Toby hummed.

Happy unlocked the tablet and launched her sketching app. She was halfway through the preliminary lines when she felt her hair brushed to the side. She ignored it, figuring Toby was adjusting a pillow or something. Except it didn’t stop after a few moments, in fact, Happy felt fingers carding through her dark hair.

“Can I help you?”

“You have nice hair,” Toby slurred. “Like, really, really nice hair.”

“Thanks.”

Happy didn’t know what she expected to happen next, but the fingers didn’t stop. In fact, after a few moments the fingers ceased their stroking and began a gentle tugging.

“Are you braiding my hair?”

“Mm, fishtail or French?”

Momentarily stunned, Happy recovered, “Surprise me.”

Toby had expressed more interested in physical intimacy than Happy had initially been comfortable with. It had taken a while to get used to waking up with another body in her sheets, and even longer to adjust to Toby’s sheets. And a warm body in bed with her—a warm body that seriously enjoys cuddling.

“Ouch,” Happy grumbled when Toby pulled her braid too tight.

“Do you have a hairtie?”

Happy pulled the black one off her nightstand and handed it to Toby.

“You should let me do your hair more often, it looks good like this,” Toby commented.

Happy lifted her tablet to see the faint outline of her new look. She did have to admire that it suited her.

“So which one is it?”

“Fishtail.”

“It’s nice.”

Happy readjusted her pillow and began sketching again. Toby curled up and rested his head on her left arm. 

The first time they’d shared a bed, Toby had tried to spoon her approximately 15 times. It worked less than once. The next morning, Toby woke up shivering next to the blanket cocoon of Happy. After a month of back and forth between failed spooning saunas and blanket hogging tundra they worked their way into a steady routine. 

They usually crashed at Toby’s since it was closer to the garage. The first time they’d answered a 3am emergency, they’d taken Happy’s truck. When they walked into the garage together, the team didn’t stop and stare or ask any questions, they’d simply launched right into problem solving mode. Happy was grateful for that; she’d grabbed Toby’s sweater since even California summer nights could get a breeze. She didn’t know what she’d expected—confrontation, questions, or a snide comment, which didn’t even make sense since this was her team who always supported her—she was grateful nonetheless when they turned to ask her questions about what would be a feasible mechanical solution. Those were questions she could answer. 

Toby admired his would be wife; his evergreen cardigan looked better on her. Paige caught him looking and tossed him a casual smile. 

Things had not been easy since Collin’s outing Happy’s marriage. Toby knew Walter’s self-kept schedule and how to avoid him. He’d intercecpt Ralph to give him tips on reading people as soon as the boy arrived after school. He spent more time at Sly’s desk, back turned to Walter, and gave Tim suggestions about dates that Paige would enjoy. 

Once Walt cornered him and asked if he was suffering enough to make Toby feel better, to which Toby replied.

“Walt, I want you to suffer the way that I’m suffering, believe me, I want to be more than a thorn in your side because you’re more than that to me, but you don’t know me if you think I’m doing this just to hurt you. Has it occurred to you that you blew it? You lost your chance with Paige, gave it up even, and that sucks. I’m not going to pretend to be sad that you’re having trouble with your love life, but did you ever stop to think maybe not everything is about you?

“I’m helping Tim woo Paige because she is trying something new and I want to support her. Now, does helping him hurt you, and does hurting you make me feel a little better, yes, but this isn’t all about you Walt. 

“We are a team, and infighting isn’t going to solve anything, but you need to come to terms to the fact that we are a team. I may be petty, but I care about us as a team more than I care about you interfering in my love life, and, I’m just saying, maybe you should do the same.”

“This isn’t your team Toby—“

“Oh my god, Walter, do you even hear yourself? This isn’t my team? The what is it—your team? You may have brought us together, but you don’t own us, and you don’t get to play gatekeeper to who can be here.”

“Just go,” Walt muttered, turning his back on the behaviorist and retreating to the loft.

That scene replayed in Toby’s head to the backdrop of Happy’s stylus dragging across her tablet.

“I’m just so grateful to be here with you,” Toby murmured into her arm.

She said nothing, but he watched her previously straight line turn curved when he spoke. He could chop that up to surprise, but the slight eyebrow twitch she’d exhibited confirmed that she was not expecting that statement and was unsure how to respond.

Instead, she erased the line and drew over it with a straight line. 

Her silence wasn’t unsettling, and he hadn’t been expecting a response. So he patted her arm and replaced his head on the pillow, curling up next to her. 

Her eyes remained focused on the tablet and her work, but in her peripheral vision, she acknowledged his return to rest with fondness. She could always tell the exact moment he fell asleep from the drop-off in his breathing. 

She gave him props for being able to fall asleep with the light of the tablet. She’d been planning to slip out while he was asleep so she could get exact measurements of the weight of her titanium rods at the garage—it was important that her crib was moveable as well as safe—but Toby had asked her to stay. The steel would still be at the garage in three hours.

It was surreal, really, taking his opinion into account. 

She’d been placing the team first for so long, her apartment location, years of semi-legal activities, hell, even her marriage had all been for the good of the team. And now, now she wasn’t quite sure she’d stay with the team if Toby wasn’t by her side. 

In some ways it was a relief, him knowing about the marriage, but it had its own set of stressors. He’d been so angry with Walter—she’d feared he’d walk away from the team, throwing away his friends, his adopted family, her—but despite his fury, he’d stayed. That was more than her dad or adoptive friend group from school had ever done for her.

It’s why she was building this crib, why she was refraining from scratching her skull at the base of the braid, why she was letting her arm get blasted with warm breath. Despite it all, knowing he may not be able to have her fully, he still gave her this, and at the end of the day, it was the best present in the world.


End file.
